


looking for something dumb to do

by kairiolette



Series: chance encounters [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, mild alcohol consumption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5859169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kairiolette/pseuds/kairiolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke just wants to go home, and Kisumi is plagued by heteronormativity. (written for the prompt "two miserable people meeting at a wedding au" on tumblr!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [here](http://kairiolette.tumblr.com/post/138369454732/22-soukisu) on tumblr, also SAY HI TO ME ON MY NEW TWITTER [@rachethyst](http://twitter.com/rachethyst)

An outstretched hand thrusts itself into the line of Sousuke’s vacant stare, interrupting his exquisite bedroom fantasy—him, alone, in his pajamas, asleep in his bedroom—and with a start Sousuke’s eyes stir into focus; they trail past the upturned palm and along a rolled-up cuffed sleeve, across the wrinkle of an undone black tie, and up into smiling violet eyes behind a wisp of bangs.

“May I have this dance?” the boy who offers his hand asks through a grin that reminds Sousuke of fairytale evil. Sousuke glances both ways and over his shoulder. But the boy appears to be speaking to him, no other.

“Are you trying to pick a fight?” Sousuke asks, and, withdrawing his hand without a trace of humility, the boy starts to laugh.

“You looked familiar!” he insists with a shrug, coming to stand beside Sousuke at the outskirts of the reception where he had been peacefully, if not drearily, wall-hugging up until now. “I needed an ice breaker.”

_You could have said literally anything else,_ Sousuke thinks, frowning dully before that dazzling smile. Or better, he could have just not spoken to him at all.

“We go to the same school,” Sousuke realizes, and he doesn’t have to affect a disinterested tone; that’s just how he talks about an hour and a half into an over-the-top, nauseatingly pastel wedding reception. His sour mood doesn’t get the boy to buzz off, though; a closed-lipped smile dimples his cheeks as he scans their view of well-dressed twenty-somethings.

“We do, don’t we?” he says with a happy sigh, in a way that makes Sousuke think he already knew. Sousuke looks out at the crowd too, though he prefers the view they have of each of the five exits, marked by glowing red signs.

“So what do you think of it?” the boy asks, interrupting Sousuke mid-reverie once more. He leans over to see Sousuke’s face. “They’re pretty young to get married, don’t you think?”

The spouses are Sousuke’s age, something he hadn’t told his parents before he left lest they badger him about his own future wedding. But Sousuke hasn’t really thought or cared about that kind of long-term; his only immediate concern is whether this guy will ever introduce himself, or if he’ll just stay glued to Sousuke’s side and make critical commentary for the rest of the night.

“Such an expensive reception for such a high probability of divorce!” The boy heaves a belabored sigh, wearing a pout that might be just as suddenly bitter as a sip from the drink Sousuke realizes he’s nursing. He glances back at Sousuke out of the corner of his eye, underneath a fan of eyelash. “What’s the point, right?”

Sousuke fails to stifle a snort, which seems to please the boy out of his mood swing.

“Why did you even come, then?” Sousuke asks before he can remind himself he doesn't care. The boy lifts the rim of his glass to his rosy lips with a flourish.

“Open bar!” he says, taking a sip. Then he leans into Sousuke, their arms nudging. “Why did you come?”

_Good question,_ Sousuke thinks with a scowl, wincing at the scent of alcohol, but he doesn’t feel like giving this guy a monologue.

“Maybe I’m not as pessimistic as you,” he decides. There’s a beat of silence, filled with music and chatter that sounds like they’re happening in another room, and then the boy bursts into a shock of laughter.

“That’s adorable!” he says, and Sousuke wants to dunk his head into the icebox undoubtedly situated somewhere behind the bar. The boy gives him that devilish, heavy-lidded grin again, looking like a witch casting a spell in a storybook. “Though, standing here alone all miserable—you would have had me fooled.”

“You’re the miserable one,” Sousuke insists, trying to ignore how much he sounds like a petulant kindergartener. But he isn’t the one who goes to weddings just to drunkenly lament the failing institution.

The boy seems to agree with a shrug, taking another swig from his glass, his pretty face contorting after he swallows. He catches Sousuke’s gaze before Sousuke can evade it. “So, you want to get married?”

For a prolonged second Sousuke misunderstands him. Then, with an ill-timed cough against his fist, he tries to turn the conversation away from him—ideally, like, other-side-of-the-room away from him, but he’ll take what he can get. “You don’t?”

The boy narrows his eyes, bottom lip pushing against the rim of his glass.

“It’s not even legal for me to get married here,” he says, and then knocks back the rest of his drink, eyes on Sousuke all the while, as if daring him to ask another question.

“That fits well with your outlook,” Sousuke replies, and the boy gives him a look like that hadn’t been the answer he expected. Sousuke supposes he really must be bewitched, if he holds his breath when the boy finally laughs.

“Let me buy you a drink!” He elbows Sousuke’s arm a couple of times, starting with a skip over toward the bar, glancing over his shoulder to see if Sousuke is following him. He’s not.

“It’s an open bar,” he reminds the boy, who flashes him that playful grin. “And I don’t drink.”

“Why did you come, then?” the boy asks, mouth falling open, like Sousuke just told him he could fly. He turns around in front of Sousuke to face him, exasperatingly curious and terribly pretty. Really, it's terrible, maybe the worst thing that's happened to Sousuke all night. He folds his hands together behind his back. Sousuke sighs.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he deflects with a cheeriness he hopes the boy recognizes as faux, stepping past him toward the bar at the far end of the reception hall. The boy tails Sousuke, his mischievous features twisting into laughter again, as if they just established an inside joke.

At the corner of the bar Sousuke leans back against the wall, resting his elbow on the counter though his suit jacket resists the movement. The boy squeezes in next to him amidst all the other drunkards ordering drink after drink, so close that Sousuke could count his eyelashes. Instead of doing that, he orders him another round. A couple stands next to them—there seems to be an infestation of couples at this party, everywhere Sousuke turns, to the point where he might start renouncing marriage just as vehemently—displaying all sorts of public affection, and when the boy notices he sidles away from them and even closer to Sousuke, sporting a rare scowl.

“You know what I believe in?” he starts, and Sousuke can’t imagine what he means until he raises his voice just a hair over whatever song is playing, “Casual flings without romantic or reproductive repercussions!”

Sousuke would have reached over to cover his mouth if his jacket weren’t so stiff.

“Did you rehearse that?” he grumbles, not daring to glance around to see if anyone heard. The boy smiles obliviously up at him. “Are you drunk?”

“I might be a little tipsy,” he confirms, with a coy sip from the drink Sousuke regrets getting him. He stands a few centimeters shorter than Sousuke but tilts his chin up like it’s more than that.  “What do you believe in?”

“Proper civilized introductions,” Sousuke says, _and never talking to strangers_. The boy makes a performance of his confusion, tilting his head and frowning. Sousuke wishes he could back up further and sink into the wall, just to catch his breath. “What’s your name?”

“You don’t know my name?” the nameless boy asks, eyes wide as he exaggerates unfounded disappointment, and Sousuke’s beginning to think a lot about this guy is exaggerated. “After all this time?”

“It hasn’t been ten minutes,” Sousuke says, “and you don’t know mine, either.”

The boy’s hands land on either of Sousuke’s shoulders, squeezing, and stilling Sousuke so thoroughly he may well be frozen.

“Yamazaki Sousuke,” he says, and his name sounds like sugar filtered through that smile. “At the campus gym Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, mid- to late afternoon. With the—oh,” he snatches his hands back, looking sheepish, “with the shoulder brace.”

Sousuke, entranced by the way the boy bites his bottom lip in a nervous tick, hopes the expression he’s making isn’t too dumbstruck.

“You weren’t hurting me, just now,” he manages, numb surprise fading as the boy slides his hands back up to his shoulders before Sousuke can collect himself to protest.

“It felt good, then?” he asks, but Sousuke ignores him.

“Are you a stalker?” he wonders, recalling his last session at the gym, though he thinks he would remember if he had seen this head of hair or those eyes peering around a corner at him. The boy shrugs, his fingers fiddling with Sousuke’s collar.

“I just happened to notice you,” he says, eyes sparkling, and Sousuke thinks, more amazed than anything, that it takes a lot more than noticing to memorize someone’s schedule. “But seeing you here was a complete coincidence.”

“You coming over and talking to me wasn’t a coincidence,” Sousuke notes, and the boy smiles up at him.

“If I see an opportunity, I take it,” he says happily. Sousuke doesn’t know how he feels about being an opportunity, or what that even really means, but he doesn’t get to dwell on it for too long. The boy swoops in closer, grappling with the end of Sousuke's tie, and Sousuke swears it gets tighter around his neck, straining when he swallows. “I see another opportunity.”

The boy points to the right of Sousuke, the profile of his face just as strangely charming as the front, and it takes Sousuke a couple of seconds to realize that he's pointing to the closest of the reception hall exits. Sousuke’s suit jacket suddenly feels like a parka; he presses his wrist to the sweating cold glass left forgotten on the counter.

“What makes you think I’d be so willing,” he grumbles, because seriously, if he gives off a _take me home_ vibe he’s going to have to really change the way he carries himself.

“I’m not as pessimistic as you think!” the boy says, and when he takes up his glass again his hand brushes Sousuke's, his lips rival the red of the cherry trapped under crushed ice. “I’ve been told I have a persuasive face.”

_By who,_ Sousuke wonders, then realizes he doesn’t want to know just how many others Kisumi has persuaded. He sighs, grabbing the wandering hand playing with his tie, and the boy takes that chance to tangle their fingers together. He has a persuasive _something_ , that much Sousuke can’t deny.

“I didn’t come to this wedding to pick up drunk men,” Sousuke says, and the boy perks up as if Sousuke said otherwise.

“Why did you come to this wedding, Sousuke?” he asks. “You never told me.”

Sousuke’s hand twitches against the boy’s, wanting to pinch his dimpled cheek or tug back his bangs or grab _his_ tie. He stays still instead.

“I came because I was invited,” is his dramatic reveal, and there's really nothing to it, but it still throws the boy for a loop. Caught off-guard might be his best look yet.

“So simple,” he says, brow furrowing, and Sousuke, letting his head thunk back against the wall, wishes it were.

“I still don’t know your name,” he says, and then he finds himself pinned against the wall, two hands splayed on his chest.

“Kiss me.” The boy juts his chin up toward Sousuke as he says it with an obscene fluttering of eyelashes, and it’s at the same time annoyingly overconfident and sweepingly attractive, and maybe just crazy enough to work if his grin weren’t so unkissably broad—until Sousuke pieces it together.

“Oh. Kisumi.” He doesn’t know where he remembers his name from—probably campus gossip he didn’t mean to eavesdrop on, because he seems like the type of person whose name everybody knows and whose face gets him caught up in rumors. “Shigino Kisumi, isn’t it?”

Kisumi tries to look disappointed, but his pout curls up at the ends. If Sousuke hadn’t known any better, he’d say he went a little pinker, even beyond his tipsy flush and overall aura.

“That has worked before, you know,” he sighs, patting Sousuke’s chest. “On lesser men.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Sousuke replies, wondering if anyone notices that he’s been getting felt up in their corner of the bar, if anyone notices he’s not exactly hating it, if anyone thinks they’re just another annoying couple at an annoying wedding.

“It’s the opposite with me,” Kisumi says, and that doesn’t particularly surprise Sousuke. Kisumi starts smoothing down his lapel again, giving him a drowsy look. “We could have a better time than this awful wedding.”

He moves as if by habit to pick up his drink but Sousuke blocks his hand, and he finds their fingers tangled once more.

“You can say no to me, you know,” Kisumi laughs, and for a moment Sousuke thinks, disgruntled, _you don’t have to tell me that_. “It has happened before, believe it or not. But I’m a big boy, and rejection actually kind of does it for me, I like—”

“What if I don’t want to do anything with a guy who smells like four whiskey sours?” Sousuke interrupts his downward spiral, but again Kisumi seems more excited by his hesitance than he probably should be.

“Are you objecting to the guy part? Or the drink part?” Kisumi asks, and then frowns, “It was three, not four.”

Sousuke rolls his eyes while Kisumi grips his hand with both of his, adapting a cutesy pleading stance. It does nothing for Sousuke, though he becomes acutely aware of his hand sweat.

“Not even a kiss?” he whines, and Sousuke bristles—he’s never been so shamelessly flirted with, and being asked to be kissed twice in one night by a boy like Kisumi is two times too many. Kisumi laughs, and, maybe sensing Sousuke’s embarrassment, he relents, though keeps his hold on Sousuke’s hand. “Then, we’ll just get to know each other. I feel like I’ll sober up quicker than ever, talking to you.”

“How could anyone say no to you,” Sousuke wonders, monotone.

“How will _you_ say no to me?” Kisumi asks, “Be gentle, Sousuke.”

As if on his command, the music transitions into a softer slow song; over a fuzzy microphone the DJ calls for all the lovebirds to come out to the dance floor as the lights dim. Sousuke and Kisumi exchange urgent glances.

“I won’t say no,” Sousuke says, just loud enough to be heard over the start of the song.

“So you are interested!” Kisumi gasps, and before Sousuke can correct him or tell him to shut up he brings their joined hands to his face, presses Sousuke’s knuckles to the warm, smiling apple of his cheek. “What luck!”

“It’s more like, I have nothing better to do,” he says, fidgeting, but Kisumi, with his kittenish eyes, seems to see through that.

“So mean!” he says, yet doesn’t seem very insulted at all. “And here I was, so enchanted to finally meet you, despite that surly disposition of yours—”

“Let’s go, already,” Sousuke grumbles, pulling Kisumi by his hand as he steps away from the bar. He wonders if he’s supposed to keep holding it, then remembers he’s no good at that type of thing, nor does he want to be good at that type of thing, so he pulls away to wipe his palm against his pants. Kisumi doesn’t seem to mind to much. “This tux is getting stuffy.”

“You plan on taking it off?” Kisumi teases. Sousuke doesn’t look back to see if he’s following as he weaves in and out of dresses and suits.

“That’s not what I meant,” he grumbles, and he doesn’t know if Kisumi even heard him until a hand curls under his arm, around the crook of his elbow.

“Good! It suits you,” he says, so close to Sousuke’s ear that it tickles. “You could loosen the tie though.”

Sousuke shakes his head, maneuvering Kisumi with his arm so he doesn’t step on the heels of his shoes or bump into anyone as they beeline to the exit. “We’ll see.”

Stepping outside, the night air makes everything more breathable, and Kisumi leads the way with his arm still tucked around Sousuke’s. This situation might be, Sousuke muses, a silver lining more than anything else: he wouldn't have been able to make it back to his house alone without extensive use of a map app or an emptied wallet for a cab. As long as Kisumi has, at the very least, a bed and a spare pillow, he’ll have a grand time.

“You better make sure not to fall in love with me,” Kisumi says after they’ve fallen silent for barely a moment. He sounds kind of slurred though he seems to be walking just fine, his expression dreamy and his chin just an inch from resting on Sousuke’s shoulder. Sousuke has a hunch that the clinginess has little to do with his blood alcohol level. “I don’t think I’d be able to resist you!”

“I thought you didn’t believe in—what was it, romantic repercussions?” Sousuke asks, and Kisumi’s wide eyes turn to him, eyebrows raised.

“You even listen when I talk,” he snorts, pulling Sousuke along by the arm and grinning up at the sky, somehow making Sousuke feel more embarrassed for his own cheesy lines, “What a catch!”

Sousuke, on his way home for the night with the most forward boy he’s ever met, certainly does feel caught.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here](http://kairiolette.tumblr.com/post/138369454732/22-soukisu) on tumblr, also SAY HI TO ME ON MY NEW TWITTER [@rachethyst](http://twitter.com/rachethyst)

Kisumi lives on campus; the streetlights give barely an orange haze of a glow so Sousuke only recognizes his surroundings once they pass the unmistakable building he has a majority of his classes in.  Kisumi tugs him along blissfully by the arm, his silence raptly expectant like he’s saving everything he wants to say for when they get to his place. Which might be for the better; Sousuke wouldn’t know where to begin. A sharp, this-is-not-a-dream pinch might be a good start, since fresh air seems to be failing at distracting him from whatever the hell he might just be throwing himself into.  

The warm body glued to his side steers him through the double doors of a building and down a white fluorescent hallway; they reach what must be Kisumi’s door, and as he pushes his key into the knob, he presses a finger to his smirking lips. Sousuke, while mentally running through every far-fetched worst case scenario of what might be on the other side of a guy like Kisumi’s door, must pull some sort of sour expression; Kisumi chuckles, shoulders hugging his ears.

“Roommate,” he explains, ushering Sousuke into the room that only stays pitch black until Kisumi flicks on the bedside lamp. A haphazard curtain—that just might be bedsheets on a clothesline—splits the room in half; Kisumi’s side has a neatly made bed and a dresser with sleeves peeking out of each drawer. “He’s asleep, so we don’t have to be too quiet.”

Sousuke wonders if the roommate wished it were a brick wall rather than a sheet dividing the room. And he wonders what Kisumi’s bold plan had been all along, if he knew someone would be sleeping on the other side of a thin curtain. In the doorway, Sousuke steps out of his shoes as Kisumi does, sliding out of his jacket so Kisumi can take it and hang it up for him.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Kisumi asks, pulling off his tie from around his neck and plopping down on his bed. Instead of answering, Sousuke tries to form an opinion of the space; slightly cluttered though the floor is clear, a lot of framed selfies of Kisumi and others propped on the desk, a basketball stashed in the corner next to a humming mini-fridge. But the flashiest part of the room is reaching out and tugging at his wrist, ever recapturing his attention. He peers up through his eyelashes as his eyelids droop with drowsiness, or maybe he’s just trying to be seductive again; “Want to make out?”

Sousuke is grateful that sometimes, it seems, his face speaks for itself. Kisumi’s sudden grin teems like he’s on the verge of laughter.

“Am I being too forward?” he wonders, lazily leaning back on his elbows, his torso obscenely elongated, the white comforter his accidental backdrop. Sousuke wishes there were a brick wall between them, too.

“You’re a hundred years too forward,” he grumbles, glancing over to the mini fridge again as if it would cool the burning at the back of his neck. Kisumi sits up straight again.

“So mean!” he laughs, leaning his cheek into his shoulder, “Will you still sleep over, though? I have a nice bed!”

He pats the mattress next to him. The bed is larger than Sousuke had expected a dorm bed to be; a pile of pillows rest at the head of it, the thick comforter tucked underneath them.

“If that’s what you want,” Sousuke says, rubbing at his shoulder, wondering whether he should sit down next to Kisumi or maybe find the nearest exit and save himself from any further embarrassment or heart malfunction.

“You just got excited, I could tell,” Kisumi says, nudging his foot into Sousuke’s shin. Sousuke shifts away, frowning.

“I didn’t,” he insists, watching cautiously as Kisumi heaves himself up from his bed with a grunt, wandering lopsidedly over the few paces to his minuscule closet.

“You're tired?” he asks, pulling out a folded maroon towel and tucking it under his arm. “You’ll still watch a movie with me, right?”

“That's fine,” Sousuke says, doubting that he'd get a millisecond of sleep tonight anyway. He sits down on the now-empty bed, testing its firmness; it might be only a few degrees softer than a floor, but it’s still a bed—finally, familiar territory for Sousuke. Kisumi pauses before slipping into what must be the bathroom, the doorway split in half by the curtain.

“Bathe with me?” he asks over his shoulder, glancing back for a second, watching as Sousuke stretches out, folding his arms behind his head. As Kisumi disappears into the bathroom, leaving the door open, Sousuke wonders idly if his pillow smells like the shampoo he’s about to use.

“Try not to slip and fall in there,” Sousuke replies, voice carrying over the rustling sound of Kisumi pulling off his button down and slacks. “I hear people die that way.”

“Thanks for the well wishes,” he says too cheerily and far too loudly, finally clicking the door shut, muffling the sound of rushing water against tile. A moment later, it opens a crack, letting out a swirl of steam and Kisumi’s voice, “Don't look under my bed, Sousuke!”

 

When Sousuke leans out of the bathroom doorway after stepping out of his own shower—mirror still fogged from Kisumi’s, the thick smell of his soaps hanging in the damp air—he almost, with inexplicable dread, expects Kisumi to be out like a light, lulled into slumber by the whiskey still undeniably whirring around in his blood. He isn't; his hair is fluffy and blown dry— _that poor roommate,_ Sousuke thinks—his cheeks rosy, dressed down in a loose-fitting tee and joggers, his eyes tired but bright and trained as always on Sousuke. Sousuke tugs his towel around his waist tighter, glad that he's too far away to see Kisumi’s dimples.

“I need to borrow pajamas,” he says, and with an energetic _ok!_ Kisumi hops up from where he had been lounging and starts to dig into one of his dresser drawers, tongue sticking out in concentration. He pulls out a tee shirt and sweats, pressing them to Sousuke’s chest and impatiently backing him into the bathroom once more.

The cotton jersey Kisumi had loaned him, Sousuke finds after he slips both arms into it and drags it down his chest, has _Shigino_ printed across the back and runs at least an entire size too small. The pants only just skirt his ankle.

“If we were boyfriends,” Kisumi starts after Sousuke comes out of the bathroom finally, fully dressed, staring down at his own bulging chest. Kisumi seems to follow his gaze, “that would be the infamous boyfriend shirt.”

“Isn’t that when the shirt’s too big?” Sousuke asks, squaring his shoulders against the slight strain of the hem. Kisumi hooks his finger under his right sleeve and tugs at it a bit, knuckle skating Sousuke’s arm.

“Sousuke,” he says, eyes dragging up to Sousuke’s face, “you know a lot about that kind of thing?”

“Are we going to watch a movie, or not?” Sousuke asks, handing Kisumi his damp towel, which he tosses onto his chair without a second glance. He pulls back the covers on his bed and crawls under them, scooting over until his back is against the wall.

“Let's lay down instead,” he sighs, leaning his cheek into his palm. He pulls the blankets down more for Sousuke, eyeing him as he yawns sweetly into his hand. Sousuke sets a knee on top of the bed, thinking only about how inviting the blankets look rather than how inviting the boy under them might. He considers laying with his back to Kisumi, but figures, for the sake his own sanity and curiosity, he should probably keep an eye on him at all times.

The bed had seemed bigger before he settled into it. Kisumi, the width of a hand away, doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Sousuke thinks he might be on the winning side of a staring contest.

“I just got nervous, all of a sudden!” Kisumi laughs, peeking at Sousuke through his fingers, and Sousuke catches his embarrassment like it were fire.

“Don't announce something like that,” he manages, vaguely wishing _he_ had actually slipped and fell in the shower. Kisumi’s too sparkly up close, even out of his swanky wedding clothes; eyelids heavy, all flushed under dim lights. Looking at him, Sousuke feels like he’s coming down from a sugar rush. Kisumi squints at him, moving his hand away from where it covers his face and tucking it under his cheek.

“You’re pretty intense, you know,” Kisumi whispers, letting his head fall to his pillow.

“What does that make you, then?” Sousuke mumbles, and Kisumi laughs sleepily. He pulls the covers up over his shoulder, curls in closer.

“Sousuke,” he starts, and Sousuke thinks he should start counting how many times Kisumi has said his name tonight. “Play any sports?”

“I swim,” Sousuke responds, and leaves it at that. Kisumi hums, shifting under the covers; he nudges their knees together a couple of times, raising his eyebrows.

“Now, what do you want to know about me?”

Nothing, should be what Sousuke says, and then he should turn around, turn off the light, and force himself into slumber.

“Is that your brother, in all those pictures over there?” he asks instead, gesturing to the dresser behind him with a slight jerk of his head. Kisumi grins, eyes squeezing shut with the force of it.

“It is!” he sighs, “Isn’t he cute?”

“Sure, but that counts as a question,” Sousuke says, smiling when Kisumi puffs his cheeks in a halfhearted pout. Sousuke nudges his knee back, “Why do you pay so close attention to me at the gym?”

He watches as Kisumi’s eyes widen, as he thoughtfully bites on his bottom lip. Then, he props himself up on his elbow again, heaving a dramatic sigh down at Sousuke.

“I first noticed you because you always looked so serious,” Kisumi starts, a strange lilt to his voice, like he’s about to relay a how-we-met story, which makes Sousuke regret asking the question, “I thought you were angry at the barbell, you had such a bad expression.”

“Oi,” Sousuke warns, but Kisumi continues, grin wide and haughty, peering down his nose at Sousuke.

“But then one day, a bunch of freshmen asked you how to work one of the machines. And to my surprise, you actually helped them out,” he says, poking a finger into Sousuke’s chest, and Sousuke tries to recall whatever instance Kisumi speaks of, but frankly doesn’t remember it much at all. Kisumi, lowering his eyes to the small space of bed between them, seems to remember enough for the both of them. “And then you gave them a nice big smile,” and he gives one as well, and Sousuke presses his warm cheek to the pillow underneath it as Kisumi’s drags his finger up until it pokes Sousuke’s chin, “and I realized I wanted to see that happen again."

Sousuke wonders if there’s even a hint of embarrassment behind Kisumi’s softened smile, or if he’s feeling enough of it himself for the both of them. Kisumi retracts his hand from Sousuke’s face, propping his chin on his fist.

“Then you started stalking me?” Sousuke jibes, though his voice cracks like it does when he first wakes up. Kisumi rests his cheek back down against his own pillow, mirroring Sousuke.

“ _Then_ you ended up in my bed, and right now, you’re smiling,” he says, leaning over Sousuke. He hovers above him, Sousuke too distracted by sudden warmth and proximity to realize just what he’s doing, until he hears a click from the lamp and the room goes dark, “so I win.”

As his eyes adjust, Sousuke hears Kisumi settle back onto his side of the bed. The blankets slide up to just under Sousuke’s chin; Kisumi must have tugged them up again. Just when he decides to close his eyes, figuring in his drowsiness Kisumi has realized it’s well past his bedtime, Sousuke gets nudged in the knee a couple of times.

“That counted as three questions,” Kisumi whispers, and Sousuke muffles his snort against the pillow. “My turn.”

They return to a back-and-forth, asking much simpler questions to Sousuke’s muddled mind’s relief: what’s your favorite color, lucky number, major, best friend’s name, hometown; will you make me breakfast tomorrow. When Kisumi takes longer than half a minute to ask a question, Sousuke blinks open his eyes, finding that he can still make out the shape of the face in front of him. Kisumi’s breath has gone deep and slow; Sousuke thinks he's a few seconds from sleep himself, until he gets poked in the chest again.

“How about a goodnight kiss,” Kisumi sighs, and Sousuke stares at him, trying to tell if his eyes are open or not, if he’s still grinning or if even his mouth got too tired for that. Sousuke swallows.

“That wasn’t a question,” he says, and with that, Kisumi shuffles in closer, warm against Sousuke’s front, breath puffing out against his chin, arms folded against Sousuke’s chest.

“Will you kiss me goodnight?” he tries again, and Sousuke lifts his head up off his pillow and inch, scanning Kisumi’s face, searching for his lips.

“Bad manners, Kisumi,” Sousuke chides in a breath, and below him Kisumi makes some half-amused, half-chagrined groan.

“ _Plea_ _—_ mm,” is something like the noise Kisumi makes when Sousuke dips down, pressing their lips together. Sousuke lets it last for just a moment, trying his best not to think about how this is his first time giving a kiss, how Kisumi’s hands grapple at his chest, how soft his lips are when they’re puckered rather than stretched across his face in a smirk. He pulls back, licking his lips, and Kisumi makes another new noise against Sousuke's cheek, and Sousuke’s sure they’re sharing a pillow by now.

"One more, I wasn't ready," he whispers, so Sousuke, burning up like he has a fever, obliges; he lets Kisumi cup his face and guide warmth between them, kiss after kind of wet, open-mouthed kiss. And it stops when Kisumi's mouth goes subtly slack and his hands fall from Sousuke's face to the bed, like some reverse sleeping beauty. Sousuke, ignoring a dormant pang in his stomach as he rests his heavy head down on the pillow beside Kisumi’s, starts to regret not giving in earlier to Kisumi’s kiss-related whims. But before he can dwell on it, and just after he pushes back Kisumi's hair from where it tickles his nose, he falls asleep.


End file.
